Hahaha now, as much as I continue to advocate people buying albums for the bands they support, there (sometimes) isn't enough cash flow to go around, especially if your average "Joe" working a blue collar job. I'm not going to lie, I've used torrents in the past to check out bands I have never heard of (and frankly didn't justify spending $15-$20 on a debut album from a band I've never heard of). On the other end of the spectrum, between the thousands of dollars (feel free to ask about my album collection if you don't believe me), the plethora of band shirts I've acquired and the hundreds of concerts I've PAID and attended (once again, I'll gladly show off ALL the tickets stubs I've kept since elementary school) I think I continually show more than enough support compared to the average music listener.
I know what you're all thinking... "yeah, whatever you got to tell yourself for justification."
I always ask myself the question when buying that ticket stub, album or merch of "Would you rather me download the album and preview it or just not support you at all because I've got better things to spend my money on?" It's not loyalty at that point, its a matter of dollars and cents, especially for the average music listener who isn't rollin' in the mad cash. There are literally thousands of bands all looking to be the next big thing out there and they all want you to buy their album, go to their shows and buy their merch. So when does enough become enough?
I refer you all back to an article that I did in response to The Agonist and their discussion about the effort and work that go into making an album. I completely understand and support her judgement, but Alissa White-Gluz put it quite right when she said "if you don't buy their album, nobody thinks it matters."
Hence why I ask is it better to hear it (initially for free) or to not hear it at all? This also varies between bands and labels as well, not all musicians are opposed to downloading and giving away music for free. It's exposure versus profit at that point (in my opinion).
Anyways, going back to the news section of this article, Century Media Records/Nuclear Blast Records were in the spotlight for the last three lawsuits involving BitTorrent downloaders. The first one was long time band Iced Earth (Century Media), then followed by All Shall Perish (Nuclear Blast) and the latest Lacuna Coil (Century Media).
"The plaintiffs seemingly have no interest in actually litigating the cases, but rather simply have used the court and its subpoena powers to obtain sufficient information to shake down the John Does." -U.S. Magistrate Judge Gary R. Brown (wrote in May of 2012, citing evidence of harassing calls to one defendant demanding $2,900 to end the litigation.)
All of which were filed without band consent and sometimes without knowledge. Nuclear Blast eventually dropped the lawsuit on the 80 users currently being charged, but others such as Iced Earth and Lacuna Coil pressed on.
Even Iced Earth main man Jon Shaffer had some choices words to their fans about the ongoing lawsuits:
"It has come to my attention that Century Media is suing fans over illegal downloads of (among others) our latest album,'Dystopia'. I felt it was important to clarify that we had no knowledge of this motion and were, sadly, not asked permission.
We all know the music industry is changing. We have been adapting to this model by embracing legal streaming services such as Spotify and by bringing our music to places we have never played before by touring our proverbial asses off.
As much as we respect that the labels are having a harder time selling music, we feel this is a misguided effort and want to make sure our fans know we would have not given our consent would we have been asked." -Jon Shaffer
("Arrrrrrrrrr you mad at me for not paying?")
You can read a copy of the lawsuit here if you like.
In the latest case involving Lacuna Coil downloaders, all (totaling 943 defendants) but one lawsuit was dropped. Judge Faith S. Hochberg further commented on the decision to drop all but one:
"...there must be a connection between defendants beyond the copyrighted work and method of distribution, namely that defendants were involved in the same transaction with the same downloader at the same time."
So time to play the question of "do you think it's right"? Everyone has a different opinion on the matter, but it's always nice to discuss current events such as this in an ever changing online world.
"It's tough. If you get one of these letters you've been put in a difficult and unfair spot. In many of these situations, the goal doesn't seem to be to fight infringement; it seems to be to get settlements. That's where the money-making is." -Rebecca Jeschke (a spokeswoman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil-liberties group)
Now for the last part I am going to quote Blabbermouth in their explanation of how these lawsuits come about.
"In a typical illegal-downloading case, a lawyer hires a company to search for Internet protocol (IP) addresses associated with the use of file-sharing software such as BitTorrent. Once the IP addresses have been harvested, the lawyer's clients file suit naming defendants as John Doe. They then seek to have mass subpoenas issued for the Internet providers associated with the harvested IP addresses in order to obtain the name and address of the owner of the IP address on the date it was harvested. Once identified, an Internet account holder typically faces the prospect of settling the case for a few thousand dollars or hiring a lawyer to fight the charges."
I hope you all saturated even a fraction of the information so that next time you buy/download an album, you can ponder whether or not you should be doing so (either way). I don't necessarily condone large amounts of downloads (especially when you are using them to collect a profit), but at the same time, don't put yourself in the poor house for the sake of a band trying to be the next big thing.
And as this Century Media article continues to be shared throughout the music world, more information is coming to light now, with a study from the American Assembly and P2P spending habits versus non-P2P who stick to the tried, tested and true. Here are some piece of the study that caught my attention:
"US P2P users have larger collections than non-P2P users (roughly 37% more). And predictably, most of the difference comes from higher levels of ‘downloading for free’ and ‘copying from friends/family.’
But some of it also comes from significantly higher legal purchases of digital music than their non-P2P using peers–around 30% higher among US P2P users. Our data is quite clear on this point and lines up with numerous other studies: The biggest music pirates are also the biggest spenders on recorded music.
Our German results appear to confirm this finding–in fact, extravagantly so. German P2P users buy nearly 3 times as much digital music as their non-P2P using peers. We qualify this because the German results are based on too small a sample to be statistically reliable: only 4% of respondents (39 people) reported using P2P networks. Yet the results are consistent with our wider findings. German P2P use is mostly the province of digital music aficionados who download in large quantities and who also buy in much larger quantities than their non-P2P peers." -American Assembly
Now, there is always going to be some rebuttal about this and it came in the form of the NDP and the RIAA. You can read both by clicking on the links above. Now I had to share this power point screen shot (obtained from a user on TorrentFreak mind you hahaha), showing an accurate breakdown on how the average US music listener build their playlist:
"If absolute spending is the metric, then P2P users value music more highly than their non-P2P using, digital-collecting peers, not less. They’re better digital consumers. But is also clear that this investment has fallen vis à vis large CD-based collections. The survey offers ample evidence of this shift in the way music aficionados relate to music–no longer organized around large CD collections or measured in terms of individually priced songs or albums, but rather defined by a mix of legal and illegal strategies for accessing everything now. Large digital collections are beginning to approximate such universal access, with contents that extend far beyond any possible listening habits and that connect, in turn, to much larger archives in the cloud. This shift is not a secret, of course. Most of the innovation in the music sector in the past several years has been an effort to (re)commercialize this demand for universal access through paid streaming services. And with some success: in the US, according to our survey, 29% of those under 30 listen to ‘most or all’ of their music via streaming services. 11% have paid subscriptions." -American Assembly
And now I digress...
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